Chapter 5 F.L.A

I launched myself forward diagonally. The baby was already falling. In the Moon's gravity it should have been slow, but panic made everything vicious. My fingers brushed the cloth and missed. The child turned once in the air, small and helpless, and the mother screamed — a sound so raw it cut through every other noise in the dome. I pushed harder, overreaching, my body drifting too far. For one second I saw the floor rising toward the baby's skull and knew if I missed I would watch a child die in front of me. My hand closed around the fabric just before impact.

The mother whispered thank you, but I barely heard it. My hands were shaking from how close death had just come.

For one second I held something untouched by all of the lies, blood, the Moon itself. Then Tasha pulled me away.

She grabbed my wrist and sprinted forward. I was caught by surprise, yet I followed because the alternative was standing alone near a tunnel with people I didn’t know pointing themselves in my direction, which was worse.

"Why the hell is F.L.A here?" I said, lunching beside her while people were still figuring out how to walk.

She stayed quiet.

Every step outside had become guesswork. People pushed off too hard and stumbled into walls, storefronts, one another. Some grabbed poles and railings, dragging themselves forward with panicked, clumsy movements. A man tried to run and launched himself waist-high into a transit barrier. Somewhere nearby glass shattered, followed by shouting. The Lunars moved through it all with unnerving ease, adjusting instinctively while everyone else fought the ground.

I noticed she was taking turns away from our base, which was the correct instinct given that the F. L.A were behind us. I glanced back once. Only people. However I felt something very close to my neck. As if dozens of ants were walking on it.

Tasha turned left again without slowing, still holding my wrist with a grip that suggested she knew a better way around this place than I did. We came around the corner of a long alley and I saw them. Shadows moved above us. Not on the street but on the rooftops, crossing between buildings in long, silent strides. The Moon’s architecture made it possible. Buildings like descending steps, each roof a pathway to the next. And with the Gravity being one sixth of earth, it made jumping much easier.

Something clenched my leg. I tripped. Drifted and fell on my hands. Before I knew it I was back on my feet. Which was the best part about the Moon's gravity.

The two figures stood at the end of the alley directly in front of us. We stopped. I put my hand on the knife Tasha had given me.

They were walking closer. I pulled my knife out. My heart was beating. My hands were shaking.

Then one of them looked past me. The one in front locked eyes with Tasha. Then he took one slow step forward towards her and pressed his lips together, taking a deep breath. She didn't move, but her hand came away from her weapon.

They turned away and were gone. She was already walking.

"What was that," I said with relief.

"Shit! We need to find somewhere to sit."

"Tasha—"

"Food first."

"The grav-failure! What did we do?" I said, shaking my hands like a maniac.

"We didn't do this," she said. "And if I don't eat something right now, I'm going to lose patience with you."

The figures were tall. Spines stretched. Limbs thinner than they should be. Heads carrying a faint distortion that you noticed and then felt uncomfortable for noticing. They were human. Entirely human. But the Moon had written its history on them in a language that didn’t wash off. That's what being poor meant here.

Lunars. Some treated them with respect. They were the first true inhabitants of another world. Others told stories about radiation, about minds changed, about something lost in the long exposure. However when I looked at them, I thought these are just humans. People the world happened to, the way it happens to everyone else. Just more visible than most.

It must have taken years to readapt to Earth-equivalent gravity under the panels. But they had. And they were fast. Even better than regular humans.

The lower district smelled like metal, broth, and old machinery. Steam drifted from vents overhead and gathered beneath the dim corridor lights. The walls were scratched, stained, repaired so many times the repairs had become the structure. Voices stayed low there. They walked easier than the rich districts.

We found a place three streets down in the lower district. Not quite a bar, not quite a restaurant. An establishment that exists in the space between spaces. A food stand built into the wall of a transit corridor. No names above the door because the people who went there already knew where they were going.

When we entered the food stall, I nearly overshot the chair and had to catch myself on the table. Tasha steadied herself against the wall. Neither of us was graceful. We sat. A woman came over without being called. She was lunar. She moved through the low-gravity easily.

"Two," Tasha said, holding up fingers.

The woman nodded and left.

I turned my head around. The other tables were occupied by people who had the particular quality of people not looking at anything. A man eating alone. Two workers in maintenance uniforms speaking quietly about the heritage taxes their children will have to pay. An older lunar woman reading something on a small projection she kept tilted away from the room. The room felt as if no one had noticed what catastrophe was happening outside.

"Two what?" I said.

"You’ll see."

"I’ve noticed you enjoy that answer."

The woman returned with two bowls of something that smelled better than it looked. A dense protein-based broth with compressed grain that the Moon’s food program had been producing in various forms since the early construction years. On Earth it would have been dog food. Here it was simply what existed. People had stopped comparing it to anything a long time ago.

I ate. It was, in its modest way, exactly what was needed. My hands were still trembling. I had to steady the bowl with both palms to stop the broth from rippling. Outside the glass, bodies kept colliding in the corridor as people misjudged their steps under the weakened gravity. Every few seconds someone slammed into the wall hard enough to rattle the utensils.

For a few minutes neither of us spoke. Outside the corridor, the artificial lights had shifted. The city’s cycle moved from late afternoon into early evening, the overhead panels dimming by degrees toward the long simulated dusk that preceded the Moon’s artificial night. We had approximately four hours before the call.

I put down my spoon. "The F.L.A have been getting more active lately," I said into the air between us.

Tasha continued eating.

"I’ve heard that," she said.

"You’d think an organization that wants independence would be more careful about showing up armed at a diplomat’s event."

"You’d think."

"Unless they weren’t there for the event."

She looked up then. Briefly before putting her mouth back down in her bowl. "Eat your food."

"I’m eating and talking. I’m capable of both."

"Debatable." she said, as she played with her broth for a second. Flipping the spoon and letting what's in it fall slowly and gently.

I leaned back slightly. She had the quality of someone performing calm rather than feeling it. The stillness was too deliberate. Too maintained. Real calm doesn’t require that much work.

"The documents," I said.

"What about them?"

"You still have them."

"Yes."

"Grandisfield asked for them back."

"He did."

I paused. "You’re very good at this." I said.

"At what?"

"At answering questions by confirming things I already know."

For the first time since we’d sat down, something moved across her face. Not quite a smile. Gone before it fully arrived.

She ordered two shots of tequilas while eating. She took a shot and put it directly in front of me.

"You know those things can kill you right?"

"You don’t want yours? Fine. I’ll have it." She tipped the shot glass above her mouth, and the tequila slid out in a slow shimmering ribbon, hanging in the air for half a second before falling.

"You're enjoying this grav-failure time we have." I said.

"Doesn't hurt having a little fun," she said, "It was probably Grandisfield himself. He's the man who's controlling gravity work now, so it's not much of a surprise to me."

I was looking behind me when someone outside hit the glass in front of them before being able to walk in.

I was reaching for my spoon when the screen on the wall changed. It was a small thing. Perhaps just to kill the silence. It had been cycling atmosphere reports and transit schedules in a rotation, and nobody was paying attention to it. Then the familiar header of LunarCast appeared.

The headline beneath the anchor’s face read:

GRAVITY FAILURE IN GLADIVEA’S DIVIDED HANDS.

I sat my spoon down.

The screen shifted from the anchor desk to a live feed outside the mayor's residence. The mayor stood at the top of the front steps beneath the polished white arches of the government estate, flanked by security officers gripping the railings to keep their footing under the weakened gravity. Behind the barricades, dozens of upper-sector residents crowded forward in expensive coats and formalwear, their movements clumsy and unstable as they fought to stay upright.

One woman in a silver evening dress pushed toward the front, nearly throwing herself off balance. "How long is this going to last?" she shouted. "My son can barely walk!"

The mayor raised both hands in a calming gesture. "Gravity restoration is already underway," he said, speaking with the polished calm of someone determined not to sound alarmed. "The affected districts will return to standard panel levels within the next few hours."

A man near the barricade grabbed the rail beside him as his feet slipped out beneath him. "A few hours?" he yelled. "Do you know what even a few hours means?"

"Yes," the mayor said, his expression tightening by only a fraction. "And I assure you, there is no medical danger."

A woman farther back shouted over the crowd. "We don't want to become like them!" Several voices rose immediately after hers.

"My daughter was born Earth-normal!"

"You can't keep us like this!"

"We are not Lunars!"

The mayor waited for the noise to settle, though it never fully did. "Let me be absolutely clear," he said. "Temporary exposure to lunar gravity will not alter muscular structure, bone density, or physical development. No citizen is at risk of permanent adaptation."

A young reporter, struggling to steady herself while holding the microphone, stepped forward. "Mr. Mayor, citizens are reporting that lower-sector residents are moving through the streets without difficulty while upper-sector movement has nearly stopped. Some are asking why emergency gravity reserves weren't redirected to residential zones first."

The mayor gave a reassuring smile. "The lower districts are simply more accustomed to reduced gravity conditions. That is not evidence of neglect. It is merely an environmental adaptation."

The crowd erupted again.

"So they get to move and we don't?"

"This is what happens when you let them run the grid!"

A woman trying to cross the pavement misjudged her step, pushed too hard, and lurched helplessly into the barricade. Behind her, two children from the lower transit corridor were laughing as they leapt effortlessly between the rails while their mother shouted for them to stop.

The reporter turned back to the mayor. "Some residents are panicking over visible physical changes."

"There will be no visible physical changes," the mayor said sharply, before smoothing his tone again. "Let us remain rational. The gravity will return shortly. Until then, citizens are advised to remain indoors, avoid sudden movement… In addition, we shall exclude the grav-tax for the next forty-eight hours for all citizens. "

Everyone cheered and whistled with the bonus he had given the Divided Hands. Then the mayor gave the practiced public smile. "Until then, everyone, float free."

The screen went back to the LunarCast anchor.

In other news:

ASSASINATION ATTEMPT ON. DEPLOMAT GRANDISFIELD.

SUSPECTS AT LARGE.

F.L.A, THE FREE LUNAR ACCORD PRESENT AT SCENE.

The anchor spoke with a measured urgency as if trained to sound calm while describing things that are not calm. "Grandisfield had been attacked at his own event. Armed operaties—number unknown, identities unconfirmed—had breached his private quarters during the presentation. Documents had been stolen. A firefight broke out in the building involving a separate armed incursion through the south gate. Grandisfield himself was unharmed and has been moved to a secure location. Many say he caused the gravity failure."

"Well," I said quietly. "That’s us."

"Don’t look at the screen," Tasha said, without moving her eyes from her bowl.

I focused my eyes on the food instead. The broth had gone slightly cold. I ate it anyway. There is a particular skill of appearing to be nobody in a room full of people who are trying to appear the same way. I wanted to tell everyone what a breathtaking day I had. Yet in this circumstance I knew I shouldn't.

We finished eating. Tasha paid for the both of us. We walked for a long time after that through the lower district corridors, through the transit underpasses. I watched the people around us— the lunar frames moving under panel gravity, the heavy-born walking with the unconscious heaviness of people who had never questioned what the ground owed them. People returning from work. The ordinary architecture of a life being lived in an extraordinary place that had long since stopped feeling extraordinary to the people living it.

At some point we passed a gravity border. The invisible line between a poor sector’s reduced panels and a maintained corridor full of electromagnetic simulation. I felt nothing. Tasha’s step changed almost imperceptibly.

We reached the base at half past seven.

It was quieter than I’d left it. The artificial night had fully settled over the city by then. Inside, Tasha sat on the edge of her bunk for a moment before dropping her body backwards on the mattress. “Call in an hour and a half."

"I know."

I made tea. There were still no cups, so I used the bowls again. As I drank my tea, I got a notification stating the return of gravity within five minutes.

The call connected shortly after. It was her. The Irish woman from the bathroom. She looked exactly as she had that afternoon.

"You had an eventful day," she said.

"You could call it that." I replied.

"The documents. You have them?"

Tasha spoke before I could. "Yes."

"Good. compress and encrypt them. Send to the usual channel before midnight." She said with authority. No urgency. No praise for surviving the day.

"There were complications," I said.

"We’re aware."

"The F.L.A was there."

A pause. "We’re aware of that."

The notification came up again. Ten seconds until they turn the gravity back on.I observed Tasha. She was looking at the screen.

The weight hit instantly. My knees buckled. My arms felt twice as heavy, my chest tight as if someone had draped wet fabric over my lungs. Even breathing took effort. I dropped hard onto the seat, legs shaking beneath me while my body tried to remember what normal weight felt like.

"Grandisfield knew we were coming, someone told him." I said, adjusting my legs.

She met my gaze for a moment. Her look didn’t confirm or deny anything. Simply waiting for you to stop talking.

"Interesting. We'll look into it. Until then, your next briefing will arrive tomorrow morning," she said. "Get some rest."

The screen went dark.

The room was quiet.

Tasha moved toward her bag on both her hands and legs. She was having a harder time than I was, considering she was half lunar. She pulled out the documents, set up the encryption on her device.

"Rothmere,Harvardson. Grandisfield named them. Who are they?" I said, looking at the roof.

Tasha sat on the edge of her bunk. "Senior members of the association. And it’s not Harvardson, it’s Halverson."

"They're the ones running it?"

"Among others."

"How many others?"

"Enough."

I tilted my head, giving her a side-eye. "You’re going to make me ask every single question individually aren’t you?"

"You’re doing fine."

"The F.L.A," I said, "those bastards were there tonight. They were watching us specifically."

"Watch your tone!" She said, looking me dead in the eyes. "The F.L.A watches everything. A room full of powerful people? Of course they were there."

"They're just a crazy organisation that believes they can get independence no matter the cost!"

She clinched her jaw slightly. "If you don't know the truth about them, keep your mouth shut. Not a lot of people understand them."

"Alright then enlighten me." I said, raising my eyebrows.

"No need for that. Let me do my job."

I let her finish.

She finished the encryption and sent the file. Then she set the documents on the table and read them longer than necessary.

"The Irish woman," I said. "From the bathroom. She’s from the association."

"Yes. Her name is Sera."

"She had the card meant for you?"

"Yup."

"Why did she give it to me instead?"

A pause. "I don’t know."

"Grandisfield said he built the organization. The Men of Moon. He sat at their table. Then they spent seven years trying to kill him?" I stopped. "Why did he leave?"

Tasha was quiet for long enough that I thought she wasn’t going to answer.

"He found out what the table was actually for." she said finally.

"Which is?"

She lay back on her bunk and cracked her back stretching. "Ask me again when you’re sure you want the answer."

I opened my mouth. Then I closed it.

I had spent the entire evening accumulating questions like debts, and now that payment was being offered I found myself hesitating,

I picked up my tea.

"Fine," I said. "sleep."

She was quiet for a while after that. Then she said, without looking at me, "That thing with the baby…" I looked up. She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders. "Most people would've kept running." "I didn't think about it." "Exactly," she said. There was something softer in her voice then. "You almost got yourself killed for someone you didn't know." I shrugged. "It was a baby." She gave the smallest nod, eyes lowering for a moment. "Yeah," she said quietly. "It was."

I laid on my bed and drifted into that space between waking and sleep before I knew it. Someone was calling. I didn't answer.